The Dorm Parent Detector

Violated self-study regulations. Two penalty points.

Honestly, I am not the model kid. I’m more like a normal teenager who needs an hour of Netflix time a week. And sadly, my beloved school doesn’t allow that. My school, KMLA, which is one of the few dormitory schools in Korea, has a strict set of rules followed by penalty points. And one rule is the self-study regulation, my worst nightmare.

Every weekday from seven to twelve, we are forced to study. And if we are caught dozing or “relieving stress” by the dorm parent, we get a nice two penalty points as a gift. This system did fix my laziness to some extent, but every once in a month or less, I face a life or death situation: penalty points versus going crazy. So, for my sanity and some comfort in my life, I decided to start a grand project: the dorm parent detector.

The basic idea of the project is simple: when the dorm parent enters my dorm room, a notification comes to my computer, and I can automatically change the screen using the all-powerful Alt+Tab key. Using the Arduino board, an ultrasonic sensor, and Bluetooth device, I connected the wires and started coding the program. As the night darkened, numerous functions were added, and by the morning the code was completed. After performing a few experiments on the best place to install the sensor, finally, everything was set. Now, it was time to wait for the target.

The following day, I was writing my essay assignment. Then suddenly, the notification “DP(dorm parent) Alarm!” popped on my laptop screen. Automatically I looked back and saw a pair of feet entering my room. But, instead of the dorm parent, my friend stood there, waiting to ask me a calculus question.

The problem was clear. Every time my roommates came in and out of the room, or sometimes when other kids came into our room, the notification popped up. Though at first I thought I would get used to it, as time passed, my laziness and desire to relax didn’t allow me to press Alt+Tab and interrupt my playtime every 10 minutes. The dorm parent detector needed improvement.

The key of dorm parent detector 2 was the distinction between the dorm parent and my peers. One, my peers were about 50 years younger than the dorm parent. Two, they did not wear Hanbok (traditional Korean outfit), while the dorm parent did. So this time, I added a mini camera to take a photo and send it to the new application as soon as the ultrasonic sensor detects someone. In the application, the photo goes through a CNN deep-learning model which I trained with a bunch of photos of an old man in Hanbok. After classification, only if the photo is labeled as “dorm parent”, the notification pops up.

Sadly though, as I became a senior, the dorm parent stopped coming to our rooms and thus, I never got a chance to use the ambitiously designed dorm parent detector 2. Still, for the juniors and freshmen who still suffer from the silent attacks of the dorm parent, I passed down the code to them, along with the endless thirst for “high-quality life”.

I am a free and lazy student, who wants to make the world, or at least the society I live in, a more comfortable and convenient place. Just like the dorm parent detector for my peers in KMLA, I coded Babytalk, an infant cry interpreter for my aunt and my VERY noisy cousin, and I created COVID-19 spread prediction model to contribute to overcoming the pandemic that is causing irreversible damage to my fellow global citizens. Until the end of my laziness, I will design and code a solution that will innovate tomorrow to be better than today. 

Now, what annoying thing should I fix today?